“Elvis Died This Morning”: The Shocking Confession That Began the King’s Most Secret Love Affair
On August 16, 1977, a chartered flight departed Los Angeles bound for Portland, Maine. Aboard were ten road-tested musicians, backing vocalists, comedian Jackie Kahane, and classical soprano Kathy Westmoreland. Everyone knew Elvis was physically deteriorating, yet the show was contracted to go on. Mid-flight, the aircraft suddenly dropped altitude and executed an unscheduled landing on the windswept tarmac of Pueblo, Colorado.
Tour manager Marty Harrell stepped out to telephone Memphis. Minutes later, he climbed back up the steps, pale and visibly shattered.
“Everybody gather around,” Harrell whispered. “Elvis died this morning.”
While the crew collapsed in tears and stunned disbelief, Kathy went entirely numb. The trauma hit so deep that her eyes could not produce tears for years. Curled up as the jet reversed course to California, her mind retreated into an internal cinematic reel, rewinding seven years to the unlikely, scandalous day their paths first crossed.
“Elvis Presley? So What?”
In 1970, Kathy Westmoreland was not an awestruck teenage groupie. She was a disciplined, five-foot-one operatic soprano. The daughter of an MGM musical singer, a former Miss Teenage America runner-up, and an alumnus of the Metropolitan Opera’s national touring company, she had previously performed at Knott’s Berry Farm alongside a young Steve Martin. By her own admission, she was an unabashed “musical snob.”
When she was booked on short notice to replace backup singer Millie Kirkham at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, she viewed rock and roll as raw, unsophisticated noise. Stepping off an elevator outside his dressing room, producer Felton Jarvis introduced her to a six-foot man in dark glasses, a caramel-colored shirt, and a black leather jacket.
To Kathy, Elvis Presley looked less like royalty and more like a rough biker or a mobster. Her immediate, private reaction was indifferent: “Elvis Presley… so what?”
Hours later, watching from the balcony, that haughty indifference evaporated. Draped in an ornate, jeweled white jumpsuit, Elvis commanded the arena with feral electricity. He changed arrangements, rhythms, and keys on instinct alone. Kathy realized in two hours that she was watching a genius.
Yet backstage, the larger-than-life icon broke the unwritten rules of show business. While headliners notoriously ignored their backing musicians, Elvis personally walked into Kathy’s dressing room to reassure her. After her chaotic opening night, where rabid crowds shattered glassware near the stage, he showed up at her door with a warm smile: “We heard you, sweetheart, and it was beautiful.”
The Penthouse Scheme and the “Virgin” Confession
The dynamic soon grew perilous. Elvis instructed Kathy to circulate a false cover story: she was to tell anyone who asked that she was engaged to be married. He claimed it was to protect her from the jealousy of other band members’ wives. In reality, Elvis was already building a wall of secrecy to protect what was coming next.
Shortly after, rhythm guitarist John Wilkinson asked Kathy out for drinks. He never showed up. Elvis had pulled Wilkinson aside, grilled him about his intentions, and quietly told the guitarist he was claiming her first. In Wilkinson’s place, bodyguard Sonny West delivered an invitation to the 30th-floor penthouse suite.
Walking into the suite—past crystal chandeliers, gold drapery, and a personal brass plaque from Vernon Presley mocking useless guitarists—Kathy was eventually pulled by the hand into Elvis’s private bedroom.
There were no limousines or illicit Hollywood seduction lines. Resting on a bedside table sat a dog-eared copy of Joel S. Goldsmith’s The Infinite Way. Elvis lit up. For hours, the King of Rock and Roll read aloud passages of Christian mysticism and metaphysical philosophy to his new backup singer, exploring spirituality, inner peace, and divine grace.
When Elvis finally leaned in and kissed her, Kathy burst into nervous laughter and crossed her eyes.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked, startled.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “You’re a married man, and I just can’t handle that sort of thing.”
Elvis stepped back, claiming he and Priscilla had granted each other permission to see other people—a classic double standard that Kathy later realized apply only to him. Flustered, defensive, and desperate to hold her boundary against the planet’s biggest sex symbol, Kathy dropped a startling truth:
“I’m still a virgin.”
Rather than turning cold, Elvis looked at her with genuine awe. He smiled softly: “That’s wonderful, honey. It means you have principles. I respect you for waiting.”
He escorted her back down to her room completely alone, without a single bodyguard in tow—an almost unprecedented occurrence in his locked-down life.
The Cost of Loving the King
Thirty minutes later, Kathy’s room phone rang. Elvis was on the line simply checking to make sure she felt safe.
She told him she was fine, but her life had fundamentally fractured. Lying awake in the dark, the structured, classical musician realized she was falling helplessly in love with a married superstar. Looking ahead, she knew with terrifying clarity that this romance could never have a happy ending.
Her premonition proved devastatingly accurate. Within days of entering his inner orbit, the private love affair dragged Kathy into a world of jealousy, violent death threats, venue bomb scares, and volatile road security—a high-stakes emotional storm that tied her to Elvis Presley until the landing gear touched down in Pueblo on that black Tuesday in August.